The interaction of a particle with vacuum fluctuations—which theoretically exist even in the complete absence of matter—can lead to observable irreversible decoherence if it were possible to switch on and off the particle charge suddenly. We compute the leading order decoherence effect for such a scenario and propose an experimental setup for its detection. Such a measurement might provide further insights into the nature of vacuum fluctuations and a novel precision test for the decoherence theory.

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• Open quantum systems & decoherence
• Quantum-to-classical transition